


Trapped Like a Prisoner in my Skin

by Ghanima_Starkiller



Category: DCU (Movies), Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Angst, F/M, clumsy teenage groping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghanima_Starkiller/pseuds/Ghanima_Starkiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark Kent thinks back to sharing his first kiss with teenage sweetheart Lana Lang and contemplates what it can mean for his future</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trapped Like a Prisoner in my Skin

Memories take on that hazy quality of old photographs, where the colors have faded, changed, over the years; oranges, reds, they lose their luster and appear as an almost mundanely ethereal brown. They’re fuzzy, they glow. But stars are difficult to capture in photos; they skies always look flat, black. And that’s not how Clark remembers the rich velvet cobalt above his head the night he took Lana out into the fields, so carefully holding her hand as they gazed up at the chips of cold, twinkling glass scattered up there. With no moon, and no city lights, there are a billion of them, and he watches, wondering which one is his. Which one he came from, who his people were. 

“What are you thinking about?” Lana asks, sitting against his side; he doesn’t move away, though he feels awkward, too big and too powerful. Her eyes are dark, almond-shaped, and they seem to soak up the glittering light of the stars. Her hair is thick, rich, as he cautiously plays with one lock of it.

He almost scoffs. How could he tell her what he was thinking? How could he even begin to try to explain. He wants to, in a perverse way; he wants to not be alone anymore. She knows. Somewhere, deep down inside, she’s known since that day on the school bus. But she never questions. That’s part of what he likes about being around her. He was never a freak in her eyes, even after the accident. Sometimes, he thinks that isn’t such a good thing; sometimes, he thinks she willfully forgets what happened, the way that she gazed at him, awestruck, from her seat, him poised in the emergency door.

“The land is so flat here,” he lies, grasping on to the nearest observation he could come up with. It’s true, and it’s the reason that there are no lover’s peaks, or lookout points for boys and girls to go to. To do… what he’s thinking of doing now. He doesn’t have a car anyway. He drives, of course he does, but only out of necessity, and he doesn’t have a license—a precaution his father deemed crucial. No picture IDs. He isn’t even sure how legal his birth certificate is. He can’t imagine his parents forging one. “It’s like…,” he begins and clears his throat. If only he were as preternaturally good at poetry as he seemed to be at everything else. “It’s like the sky goes on forever and ever. Limitless. Beautiful.”

“So many stars,” she agrees, and he only nods, smiling a little at the thought that she might be contemplating something like he was. Does she wonder if there’s life out there? She smiled, looking at him again, her face obscured by the darkness, except for the glistening in her dark eyes and the whiteness of her teeth. “Maybe we should join the UFO club.”

She’s joking, but it falls flat, and he somehow feels self-conscious now, embarrassed. He’s playing with his own hands as she reaches over and takes one—just one of his large hands between her two, smaller ones, so petite, lovely. He can hear her heartbeat quicken, practically see it in her chest speed up like a hummingbird’s wings in a cage. He knows what comes next. He isn’t sure he’s ready. But who ever is?

Their lips meet, and his own heart starts to pound, so hard he’s surprised she can’t feel it, pressed up against him, pulling that hand of his up around her shoulders. Her lips are soft, warm, and they taste of grape lip gloss—just a hint, it’s not too sloppy, or too slick. There’s the suggestion of her tongue against his hot, wet mouth, and his body is hard, tense, in ways that he had never dreamed of.

But he holds her as if she were made of Grandma Kent’s good china, his arm around her but not resting against her, not crushing her to him, as he longs to do. Control, he reminds himself. He has to keep control. And even in that moment of joyful discovery, or sensual awakening and sexual pressure, these thoughts are speeding through his mind, keeping him separate, distant. He can’t lose himself to it. If he fully understands that, he begins to let it go. In a wash of natural passion, carrying him down with its treacherous undertow, he touches her breast, their tongues now entangled, his palm filled with the feel of her puckered nipple beneath the fabric of both shirt and simple cotton bra.

The voices come in a flood, the idle conversation of Smallville: laughter and arguments, simple sentiments and nonsense, all over-lapping and rushing over him. “What is it?” she asks in alarm as he pulls away, his hand to his head, the heel of his palm pressing into his temple.

“Nothing, I—” But it’s another lie. His control has slipped, that island in the middle of the ocean seems to far away and the world is huge again. He looks at her, and with a quick, sharp inhale, looks away again. At first, his vision only penetrates what his subconscious wants it to, and he sees clearly through her clothing the floral print of her panties and the plain pink of her bra. And then, with no way of reining it in, he sees through her, her heart squeezing in her chest, skipping a beat, wondering if she did something wrong. Bones, and blood running through veins, muscles, capillaries, the movement of it all in such breathtaking clarity.

He shuts his eyes tight, and takes deep, gulping breaths. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, stumbling to his feet, even as the deeper world begins to recede, and the voices fade into the background again. “I’m sorry,” he repeats uselessly, because he knows he’s already ruined the moment.

She’s standing up now, too, her expression apprehensive, anxious, and he’s not sure he can handle her insecurities as well as his own at the moment, as ruthless, as thoughtless as that sounds. But he does, he worries for her, the way he worries for all those he cares about, no matter how hard he tries to push that away. To be callous, and self-preserving. He could tell her that this has all been a mistake—it’s one of his first thoughts, in fact. But that would hurt her, and he chokes back on the words.

“I have a really bad headache,” he tells her, the fib making his heart throb. He attempts a smile, but it looks as strained as it feels. And this seems to soothe her, and she takes his arm, threading her slender, brown one into the crook of his brawn.

“Come on,” she says in a gentle murmur, “I’ll take you home.” There’s a note of disappointment in her voice that he can hear as keenly as his own heartbeat. They walk back to the farm like that, arm-in-arm, looking up at the stars. He’ll be better prepared the next time. He promises himself that. But the nagging doubt that it can never be as good, as passionate and as lovely as it is for others sows its insidious seeds in his brain, and its harvest is bittersweet.

“What are you thinking ‘bout, sweetie?” the girl asks him, shaking him out of his reverie, making him blink at the gunmetal gray sky over the dirty snowdrifts. She’s sweet, and he wonders what she’s doing, working at a place like this. He wonders what it’s like, to be stuck in a small town, with small town uncertainties. The world was too big, but it was getting easier to make it smaller.

He shakes his head, his black curls bouncing slightly—he needs a haircut. “Nothing,” he tells her with a soft, charming smile. And he follows her inside. The trucks would be coming in soon, for the afternoon rush. And he leaves the memories behind for the moment like a battered old picture album; tucks them away carefully, never forgetting.


End file.
